The NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorolgical Laboratory (AOML) conducts the long-term National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) to track the status and trends of coral reef ecosystems of the U.S. Atlantic and Caribbean coral reef jurisdictions. This FY21 summary brief provides an overview of the most recent survey efforts.
Survey site locations were selected to represent temporal‐resolution monitoring with moored instruments at fixed time‐series. These sites were placed on depth gradient to assess how vertical structure affects reef status and trends. Pulaski Shoal (1m), White Shoal (5m), Bird Key Reef (15m), and Black Coral Rock (25m) are the selected study sites.
Figure 1: Map of study sites in Dry Tortugas National Park areaSubsurface Temperature Recorder (STR)s made by SeaBird Electronics were placed at all 4 sites and collected temperature measurements at 5-minute intervals for 3 years.
Plot option 1:
Figure 2: Temperature data collected for 3 years at four sites in the Dry Tortugas at 1 m (Pulaski Shoal Lighthouse), 5m (White Shoal), 15m (Bird Key Reef) and 25 m (Black Coral Rock).The 1m, 5m, and 15m collected data for the full deployment. The 25m STR stopped collecting on Febuary 7th 2020.
At Bird Key Reef additional instruments were deployed for a 72-hour diurnal suite. SeaFET pH logger, Tiltmeter and EcoPAR collected measurements at 5-minute intervals. Subsurface Automatic Samplers (SAS) collected discrete water samples at three-hour intervals (n=24).
Figure 3: pH, temperature, current and PAR collected from instrument deployment at Bird Key Reef site around 15 meters from June 25th to June 28th. Grey blocks denote night time through out sequence of plot. Instruments measured parameters every 5 minutes.
| Data | Number of observations | Days running | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temperature (STRs) | 1.1 million | 700 days | 4 depths |
| pH | 879 | 3 days | 1 depth |
| Light | 876 | 3 days | 1 depth |
| Current | 880 | 3 days | 1 depth |
AOML’s climate monitoring is a key part of the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program of NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP), providing integrated, consistent, and comparable data across U.S. Managed coral reef ecosystems. CRCP monitoring efforts aim to:
Atlantic Climate team lead: nicole.besemer@noaa.gov
Principal Investigator: ian.enochs@noaa.gov
NCRMP Coordinator: erica.towle@noaa.gov
Coral Reef Conservation Program: http://coralreef.noaa.gov
NCRMP climate page: https://www.coris.noaa.gov/monitoring/climate.html
NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/
Field team members: Anderson Mayfield, Graham Kolodziej, Nicole Besemer, Nathan Formel, Patrick Kiel